Houston and a Warm Quinoa Salad

To start, I want to whisper to you about this new favorite of mine. It's a food. I got these new small size blue pyrex bowls a few weeks ago, and I can't seem to stop filling them up with warm quinoa salad with pinenuts & feta and spinach and raisins and in this case, caramelized leeks and avocados. Oh, and a fried egg plopped on top. Bloop.


It's been quite awhile since I could justify taking the time to cook myself a meal. For months now, we've scaled back on making things from scratch, opting for fast and easy and non perishable groceries instead of bulk grains and fresh vegetables. It's been really nice getting re-acquainted with the kitchen and with real food and with slowness.

I mentioned last week that I'm headed to Houston in the fall to start the Master of Architecture program at Rice University. And surrounding this news, I've been re-acquainting myself with some other feelings, a bit more distant, more unfamiliar than lazy cooking. The feeling of making a decision for myself and by myself, the feeling of moving to a new city, a new life, a new livelihood and the feeling of knowing and not at all knowing what my future will look like. This is a little vague, but that's sort of how I feel about this newly acquired life plan I have. I know the plot, but not the language and I've just taken the book off the shelf. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, this feeling of beginning, but it's been a long time. When I'm not terrified, I am really really excited about it.

It'll be hard to leave this city, of course, and the people who have helped it feel so very homey over the last year. But I am excited for the challenge of Houston. I'm excited to live in a place less likable, less saturated with people so similar to me. I'm excited to live in the middle again for a while, excited to experience again what most of this country is like. I'm especially excited to do so, while studying the way we organize ourselves through architecture. I really agonized, to be honest. Before I saw Rice for myself, I was so uncomfortable picking up again within two years of arriving here, to move my life again. As you know, I am instinctively a nester. Our move to the west coast was so much harder than I thought it would be. But at the same time, I feel like I'm about to commence such a terrific adventure. That feeling, for now anyway, has completely taken hold.

It has been a long time since I saw what I wanted, and had it.

I'm With Stupid

Sometimes, John and I totally lose it. We're both really busy right now--he with the regular rigor of graduate school and me with the regular chaos that chases me around--so that when we take communal breaks from our respective work...all bets are off. Sometimes we gossip about the cats in our neighborhood. Sometimes we make jokes about who is the smart one and who is the funny one. And other times, well other times, the only thing in the fridge are two dozen eggs and we do really pretty ridiculous things while trying to figure out dinner.





I finished a really exciting project over the weekend, but because it's in the mail to someone, I want to wait to post until it's been received. Please stay your appetite for fun with these funny pictures until then.

All I Can Think About

Is the dinner parties to come! John put the finishing touches on our measure it, 96 inch! picnic table yesterday. That's seating for 10 at least, 12 if we're cozy. Since moving into our miniature apartment last fall, I've been dreaming of hosting outdoor style dining events but haven't had the furniture to turn that dream into a reality.



But Saturday we joined the tool library, and checked out a jigsaw (they were out of circular saws), which made the sawing a whole lot easier. And Sunday we bought materials and started cutting all the wood to size, and then a little every day after work we kept working on it, through several snags in our directions, until yesterday when John championed it and finished it without me in the middle of the day.



That's all salvaged wood, which came in way under the budget I'd made for Fresh From Home Depot lumber and I love the variations in the top. We may seal it up one of these days but since it so seldom rains out here, we're not in any rush.



ps. Ryan requested a "full body shot" so I'm adding it here. I'm a sucker for close ups, and so sometimes forget the bigger picture. My bad.

A partner in crime...

Is the very best sort of partner.




Mid day green goddess themed snack. And Beer! In the middle of the damned day. I may be losing it, but at least I've got company.

Now we just have to wait.

So John finished with school this week, an event we celebrated on Monday evening with Jelly Beans and Beer at the park. One whole year of graduate school closer to being Doctor Geography is nothing to sneeze at.


So that also means that now I have an extra set of hands around here for things that are really more of a two person job. The first on the list was getting that aforementioned hefeweizen into bottles so they can start carbonating and aging so that we can drink it. You may however remember that the most dreaded, most labor intensive part of the whole process is when you have to put that stuff into bottles, a process that goes something like this: power wash, suds it up, rinse it WELL, sanitize, and then repeat.

It takes a while just to get everything prepared and then you have to also siphon the tasty beer from the primary into the bottling bucket (I've reverted to single stage fermenting since moving here, as it is a bit simpler in our tiny quarters), managing to leave the trub behind, mixing in the sugar, keeping everything Clean. And then actually dispensing it into those shiny vessels and capping them all off. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

But we did it. John cleaned the kitchen and kept things orderly while I cleaned out the bottles and then we did that brilliant waltz described up there of doing the damned thing and afterwards, John scrubbed the floor. Truly.


Afterwards, the payoff is all those shiny bottles lined up on the countertop ready to do their part and turn that delicious hoppy liquid into something refreshing. Now we just have to wait.



I couldn't have done this one alone. Thanks to Andrew and Miriam for being such trooper beer drinkers and giving us a bundle of bottles. And thanks to Gerik back in January for so considerately saving those big old 33 oz. re-sealable bottles he drank out here, which were Great for this.